Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fried Pigs' Feet
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Mix the beaten eggs with salt and pepper.
Dip the pigs' feet in the egg mixture, then coat with bread crumbs.
Let the egg coating dry.
Fry
Fry in a skillet of hot lard until rich brown.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Bind the bread crumbs to the pigs' feet and help form a coating.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, browned outer coating during frying.
- Pigs' feet
- Serve as the main ingredient, carrying the coating and frying.
- Hot lard
- Conducts heat to brown the coating and adds rich flavor.
The step that matters
Let the egg coating dry. A dry coating adheres better and helps the crumbs stay on during frying, giving a more even brown crust.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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